33 Playing the Bridge – Part 2

Playing the Bridge was an inventive collaboration which transformed Hull’s Scale Lane Bridge into an interactive musical instrument as part of Hull 2017 City of Culture. It was the idea of bridge architect Jonathan McDowell who recognised that like the Gamelan, the bridge can be played by striking the metal work to make tuned sounds. The culmination of the project was Nye Parry and Madi Boyd’s sound and light installation which opened at Scale Lane Bridge, Hull, on weekends throughout April in 2017.

The installation inside the bridge hub, used sounds gathered in open Gamelan workshops, which took place in and around the bridge, as well as interviews and sounds from Qualter Hall, the engineers who built the bridge. These combined with films created through a collage of hundreds of manipulated images taken of the bridge under construction. The imagery was then abstracted and fragmented into a visual poem that conveyed a sense of the complexity of the bridge and revealed the hidden mechanics of the opening mechanism. It was dark, ethereal and atmospheric, as you can see in the gallery and in the second half of the documentary film below.

The installation attracted thousands of visitors.

For more information about the artists visit: https://www.nyeparry.com/ and https://www.madiboyd.com/

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